MOVIE REVIEWS : Fighting a ‘War’ to Mend All Wars?

Goodness in “The War” positively plops off the screen. It’s a movie about how love is all there is. As Vietnam vet Stephen Simmons (Kevin Costner) says to his son Stu (Elijah Wood), “In the absence of love, there’s nothing in this world worth fightin’ for.”

Nothing????

Set in Mississippi in 1970, “The War,” directed by Jon (“Fried Green Tomatoes”) Avnet and scripted by Kathy McWorter, dawdles on for more than two hours dispensing life lessons. It’s an entire compendium of family values civics lessons--it’s like “Forrest Gump” if Forrest had directed. The warm nostalgic glow of goodness turns everything to pablum.

Stephen, suffering from post-traumatic stress, has trouble landing a job in his hometown. But he’s an angelically decent man; the war has taught him that violence doesn’t solve anything. He passes his wisdom on to his son and his daughter Lidia (Lexi Randall), who are caught up in a feud with a family, the Lipnickis, even more dirt-poor than they are.

For a movie that’s supposed to be so all-embracingly “understanding,” it’s odd how many arrant caricatures abound. The Lipnicki kids, for example, make their entrances like the zombies from “Night of the Living Dead,” though they move considerably faster. Scowling, hard-muscled and perpetually muddy, they seem to be in the movie for the sole purpose of testing the Simmons family creed of nonviolence. Why, Stephen gives two of the younger Lipnicki whippersnappers a cotton-candy stick each and they still try to knock down Stu and Lidia’s tree fort.

The tree supporting that fort--a great, curlicued 800-year-old oak--is easily the most interesting and venerable thing in the movie. And it’s a tribute to this movie’s wet-noodled whimsy that one cares more about the survival of that oak than about most of the characters. Avnet and McWorter work in at least half-a-dozen children-in-peril or adults-in-peril or adults-and-children-in-peril subplots to no avail. They also work in a lot of vintage hits on the soundtrack, such as Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.” They introduce a cliffhanger about a house up for auction that one can see coming a mile (maybe two miles) away.

The centerpiece sequence is a particularly bad idea. The Vietnam War is somehow likened to the final, epic battle for the tree fort that matches the Lipnickis against Stu and Lidia and Lidia’s friends Elvadine (the live-wired LaToya Chisholm) and Amber (Charlette Julius).

The crosscuts between Vietnam flashbacks and kid wars are supposed to point up the futility of violence. What it really points up is the stupidity of misplaced symbolism. Cross a hawk and a dove and you get a turkey.

Costner coasts on his low-key moodiness. He’s self-effacing in a movie-starrish way--lots of close-ups of his placid pain and furrowed brow. Costner looked as if he might be getting back the edge to his acting in “A Perfect World”--it was his best performance since “Bull Durham”--but he’s blandly noble here. So is just about everybody else in “The War”--deep down that is. Even a racist schoolteacher, played by Christine Baranski as if she was Madame DuFarge at the guillotine, turns nice.

Elijah Wood--that terrific little actor--has the spunk and fury to make Stu into more than just a peacenik. But he’s weighted down by homilies. (His performance resembles a champion swimmer paddling through heavy molasses.)

As his mother, Mare Winningham is effective, as usual, but her role is equally weighted. By the time “The War” is over, you may think its real connection to Vietnam is symbolism of a quite different sort: It’s endless, costly and misbegotten.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for intense depiction of human struggle and conflict. Times guidelines: It includes graphic Vietnam War flashbacks and scenes in a reservoir tower that you wouldn’t want your kid to emulate.

‘The War’

Elijah Wood: Stu Kevin Costner: Stephen Mare Winningham: Lois Lexi Randall: Lidia A Universal Pictures release of an Island World picture. Director Jon Avnet. Producers Avnet, Jordan Kerner. Executive producers Eric Eisner, Todd Baker. Screenplay by Kathy McWorter. Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson. Editor Debra Neil. Costumes Molly Maginnis. Music Thomas Newman. Production design Kristi Zea. Set decorator Karen O’Hara. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.